Who We Are

420 Pipes (Four Twenty Pipes) is an online head shop / smoke shop marketplace located in Springfield, Illinois. 

At 420 Pipes we believe in the importance of supporting local, even online. Our platform is dedicated to making it easy to find and support your favorite local head shops / smoke shops, even as we continue to grow. Our "Smoke Local" section allows you to look for specific head shops / smoke shop vendors by location. 

As we continue to grow, we are dedicated to helping as many head shops / smoke shops adapt to the online economy.  

The Team:

Nicholas Thomas: Founder, CEO
Nicholas was born and raised in Taylorville, Illinois. He is happily married to Hallie Miller-Thomas. He discovered cannabis when as a teenager, and has been a supporter ever since. He moved to Springfield with his family in 2017, and shortly after began working in banking as a licensed banker / loan officer. He originally came up with the idea for 420 Pipes, an online head shop that offered one hitters and other pieces for $4.20 in October 2021. As of May 2022, he has focused full-time on 420 Pipes!

Ellen Tadros: Founder, Managing Director
Born in California and raised in Portland, Oregon, Ellen moved to Springfield in 2017 and fell in love with the Midwest. She joined the 420 Pipes while in its infancy in 2022. She brings a communications background, and a passion for networking to 420 Pipes. In her spare time she likes to spend time baking treats with her kids, as well as playing with her pets!

Hallie Miller-Thomas: Founder, Creative Director
Hallie was raised in the small town of Tovey, IL, where she graduated 6 months early from South Fork High School. She is a social media expert having built Instagram accounts with over 10k natural followers, as well as capturing and editing professional level photos for 420pipes.com.

How It All Began

Photo by Zach Adams at 1221 Photography

The summer and fall seasons of 2021 were awesome for Nicholas. In July, he got engaged to his best friend (now wife) Hallie. He was leaving his job at a bank, opting to work at a credit union. But, 2021 presented Nicholas with a dilemma. 

See, Nick has been a fan of 420 culture for quite some time. Head shops, smoke shops, and even dispensaries, he had found himself frequenting. His appreciation for cannabis since his younger years had never subsided. However, with the legalization of cannabis in his home state, he all-of-the-sudden found himself in a circle of people who openly enjoyed smoking weed. What was something that he once kept low-key, he now found friends and family that were comfortable experimenting that hadn't before. This is a great thing! It did come with an issue, though. 

When more of your friends start smoking and experimenting, there ends up being a lot more hands touching your favorite smoking apparatuses, which means that they start breaking. 

That's just how it is. A bunch of newly found "stoners" get together and get a little giggly, they sometimes (always) drop things. 

Nicholas has fancied pipes since he first started smoking, so he saw this as an excuse to go back to his favorite head shops and shop around for new pieces. But this was expensive, and started to really hurt his wallet. That's when he had the idea to start his own online head shop, where he could sell cheap pipes for $4.20. So, 420 Pipes was born! 

Soon after, Nick realized something important; once you open a business in your favorite niche', your favorite businesses in the space are now your competitors.

We didn't want to be the guys that come in and try to compete against the people that had been normalizing the industry and providing an experience that Nicholas loved. So, what now?

Well, he realized he had solved a problem. Doing business online comes with a whole new set of headaches that many head shop /  smoke shop owners don't have time to deal with. So, he opened up a marketplace in April of 2022 on 420pipes.com. Now head shops, smoke shops, glass blowers, and manufacturers can all sell to consumers while we take care of the behind the scenes headache! 

Soon after, Ellen Tadros joined the team. With Nick and Ellen working full-time on expanding the business, they soon after secured a space to function as their fulfillment center, and began working on offering more business solutions. 

With the extra space and expanding network of businesses, they began building a b2b sales platform that works in tandem with the online platform. So now, they are able to offer products for resale not only the shops that sell on their site, but to stores nationwide as well.  

We now offer an online marketplace, fulfillment center, and b2b wholesale services!

Plans For The Future

420 Pipes' (Four Twenty Pipes) plan for the future is to become the go-to solution for small businesses to open and expand their business, from ecommerce, to brick-and-mortar, order fulfillment, inventory management, and many other needs industry wide.

We plan to expand into the b2b cannabis industry, including farming, wholesaling, and transporting goods. 

For now, we are building our list of vendors, and selling as many of their products as possible on our site. 

We believe that the industry should be lead by the small businesses who have been running this industry for years, and our mission is to help make that process as easy as possible those passionate, dedicated people!